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njlauren -> RE: Jason Collins: "I'm Gay" (4/30/2013 8:22:41 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DesFIP
Superbly articulate statement. It's just such a shame that he's tried to hide from himself for so long.
As far as why someone like this needs to stand up and say it, let us just say that being female and liking men rarely gets you arrested. Prior to Stonewall, walking down the streets hand in hand with a same sex partner did just that.
And even today, the rates of suicide of gay teens is still much higher than the rates of suicide of straight teens. Which is already too high.
Perhaps having someone of his stature be open will prevent a child somewhere from killing themselves in despair about their sexuality.
Amen. We hear about when young people kill themselves over being bullied on the net/facebook and so forth, but the reality is that LGBT youth commit suicide at rates several magnitudes above the norms for their groups, they are much, much likely to be attacked physically, and sadly, are statistically at higher risk of having their parents throw them out on the street. When guys like Collins come out, it makes a big difference. I did some outreach work with groups that tried to help LGBT youth, I visited shelters for kids with nowhere to go, and the stories were heartrending. I saw a lot of kids from the bible belt, and it was unconscionable the stories I hear, supposedly 'Christian' parents and their fucking preachers telling the parents it is their duty to cast out evil and the like......still makes my blood boil, and being a parent myself, I don't understand that at all.
I think the most touching thing was the time an Episcopal Bishop (a dear, sweet man) came to visit the kids at the shelter, and the looks on their faces when he did the simple thing of blessing them and calling them brothers and sisters..it was the first time in their life they ever heard someone telling them they were loved (personally, I think they liked the Bishop's jokes even more, funny guy;).
I really, really get angry when I hear blacks going off on this, about gays in general, how it isn't civil rights. It is funny how fast they forget what went on, despite a movie like "42" being out there, that told just how much Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball meant, how that shaped a large part of the civil rights movement to come, and the point is it is exactly the same thing. People saw Robinson play the game the way he did and they realized he was a human being who happened to be black who could play the game as good or better than almost anyone else, and it changed attitudes (that, and the players that followed). Plus he gave hope to black kids who maybe for the first time saw someone who was black being respected for something.....hope is a powerful thing. No, Robinson didn't solve the problems with race, and a 34 year old journeyman NBA player is not going to solve homophobia. But each person out there changes perceptions, Will and Grace and Modern Family are silly comedies, but they did a lot, as did the many nameless and faceless people who came out.
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